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QE2 or the second round of the Fed’s quantitative easing is coming to an end this week. What did this euphemistic printing press accomplish for the economy and is there a QE3 in the works? This Fed monetary policy effectively purchased 600 billion dollars of debt from banks with money it created electronically. No need for the press in this day and age to expand the money supply. It is considered by some the ultimate Ponzi scheme. The illusion created is attractive treasury notes and low inflation leading to consumer confidence and speculation (spending). Deflation, as in The Great Depression, is avoided and mortgage rates are kept low.

“Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+54,000) in May, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

reported today. Job gains continued in professional and business services, health care, and mining. Employment levels in other major private-sector industries were

little changed, and local government employment continued to decline.”

Unemployment is staying at 9% while some government agencies have started to pare their workforce for lack of revenue,

How about trying to keep the inflation in check? Here is inflation data annualized by month as reported by InflationData.com. Inflation is on the move up.

Commodities:

Has anyone noticed the rise in commodity prices at the grocery store?

Here is a six month price index chart for food and beverage from indexmundi.com

Most food and other ag commodities are directly affected by fuel prices for production and transportation. The lag time of the affect is difficult to pinpoint on the whole industry but it is safe to say that the 2011 crops for human and animal consumptions are going to put tremendous upward price pressure delivered goods. Other non food markets to get hit are cotton, corn ( for Ethanol ), and soybeans used for byproducts. Contributing factors the reduce in this year’s supply from drought in the South and record flooding in the Midwest. If it is a commodity that is planted and harvested it is going to see a big price jump soon. We can call that inflation, too.

“Second, while the inventory of properties in the foreclosure process has declined steadily over the past six months — thanks in large part to 16 consecutive months of year-over-year declines in new default notices — the inventory of unsold bank-owned REOs increased in April and May even as new REO activity slowed in both of those months,” Saccacio continued. “That points to continued weak demand from buyers, making it tough for lenders to unload their REO inventory. Even at a significantly lower level than a year ago, the new supply of REOs exceeds the amount being sold each month.

Consumers are not buying cars, houses or durable goods as the FED hoped. Payroll counts are at record lows and unemployment is high while inflation is making a move. When the QE2 medicine wears off speculators are sure to drive prices up when the volatility ensues.

So what can hold that in check? QE3 – maybe and for a while. Sooner or later the debt and underlying disease will have to be dealt with. We will have to “cut our way to prosperity”. Buying up your own debt to repay others didn’t work for Charles Ponzi and it won’t work for the FED.

There may be those among the less than brainwashed lemmingerati out there who have noticed what, as we have pointed out for the past month when reporting on the various manufacturing and regional Fed indices, has been an epic collapse in the appropriate data series. As John Lohman so kindly demonstrates, the two month implosion has been beyond epic, and while certainly the biggest drop in the past decade, may also be the all time worst ever. To the point of this post: the last time we had an economic contraction of this magnitude was back in February of 2008, which was two months into the most acute recession in post-depression history. We are confident that once the groupthink wraps its head around the fact that the auto production based renaissance is not coming, and the economy officially tumbles into the commode of Ben Bernanke’s fiat dungeon, the NBER will determine (with an appropriate 12-18 month delay), that the current recession started in April of 2011.

See chart at site.

Not to worry, though, thanks to Obama’s $500 million new, Advanced Manufacturing Partnership “jumpstart”, we are going to be sitting pretty in no time.

I am so excited that the federal government is committed to “nation building here at home”, and has decided to “partner” with 11 major corporations, including Caterpiller, Corning, Dow Chemical, Ford, Honeywell, Intel, Johnson and Johnson, Allegheny Technologies, Stryker and Proctor and Gamble. And how wonderful for us all that it is based, in part, onthe recommendations of Obama’s brilliant Science Czar, John Holdren:

In his Friday speech at Pittsburgh as he announced the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, Obama also put a focus on government “investment” in “clean energy” and pointed to the government bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler as successes.

“If we want a robust, growing economy, we need a robust, growing manufacturing sector. That’s why we told the auto industry two years ago that if they were willing to adapt, we’d stand by them. Today, they’re profitable, they’re creating jobs, and they’re repaying taxpayers ahead of schedule,” said Obama.

“That’s why we’ve launched a partnership to retrain workers with new skills. That’s why we’ve invested in clean energy manufacturing and new jobs building wind turbines and solar panels and advanced batteries,” he said.

The White House said the creation of the government-corporate partnership program was based on a recomendation by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST is co-chaired by John Holdren, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

In Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, a 1973 book that he co-authored with Paul Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Holdren and his co-authors wrote: “A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States.”

“De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.

“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. “This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”

In a videotaped interview with CNSNews.com in September 2010, reporter Nicholas Ballays asked Holdren what he meant by a campaign to de-develop the United States.

“What we meant by that was stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality,” said Holdren. “Thanks a lot.”

Ballasy followed-up: “And how do you plan on implementing that?”

“Through the free market economy,” Holdren said.

See video of Holdren explaining his call for de-developing the United States at CNS News.

John Holdren, you may remember, co-wrote the radical enviro-wacko book, Ecoscience, with Paul and Ann Ehrlich.

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

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Jon Stewart is either a self-deluded fool, or he actively tries to mislead people — it’s always so hard to tell with liberals/leftists/progressives.

I’m guessing the latter as Stewart led that farcical, left-wing “Rally To Restore Sanity” that was billed as some sort of non-partisan, post-modern, ironic, hipster event, when he knew that his audience were deeply engaged liberals, who vote Democrat.

The rally was scheduled for 10, 30/2010, just a few days before the mid term elections.

Stewart’s style of humor tends to be relatively gentle when poking fun at Democrats, but more pointed with regard to Republicans. While he regularly focuses a bemused sardonic eye on the foibles of conservatives, his chief criticism of Democrats tends to be that they are not liberal enough, or that they confront and oppose Republicans too weakly.

I’ve never been a Stewart fan, and you won’t see me giddily posting video of one of his ever so gentle barbs towards a Dem – evah.